Innocence Lost: a play about Steven Truscott

....strikes to the core of anyone with a heart….the story refuses to go away. Nor should we let it.

— Kathy Rumleski, London Free Press.

1959, rural Ontario, Canada. Twelve-year-old Lynne Harper was found raped and strangled to death. Within days, her fourteen-year-old classmate Steven Truscott was charged with her murder. After a two-week trial Steven was found guilty and sentenced to hang. Thus began the story that inflamed the community, the country and the world. This true story is looked at through the eyes of the fictional character of Sarah, a fellow classmate of Steven and Lynne’s, as she deals with her own loss of innocence, her world turned upside down and a personal journey to find truth and justice. The play examines the nature of community and how good people can make bad choices. 6W/4M

Commissioned by the Blyth Festival 2007

Blyth Festival productions 2008, remount 2009, director Miles Potter.

Nominated for the 2009 Governor General's Literary Award

Co-production between the National Arts Centre and Centaur theatre, 2013 Dir. Roy Surette

In its examination of our inability to ever truly know the full story about any particular moment - Harper’s killing is, after all, still unsolved - Innocence Lost echoes British dramatist Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen. In its depiction of hysteria in a small town and how children get caught up in the excitement of a police investigation, it brings to mind Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible and Ian McEwen’s novel Atonement.